Friday, August 7, 2009

Gulf Fritillary caterpillar and passionvine

In my yard there are numerous volunteer native passionvines, hiding themselves in shrubs and surreptitiously climbing trees. They aren’t very large; the leaves are maybe 3 inches (7.6 cm) wide if pressed flat. I think this is one of the corky-stemmed passionvines, Passiflora suberosa (the older part of the stem bases become woody, but with a cork-like appearance and texture). The flower is a nondescript pale yellow to green miniature version of the showy purple or red passion flower with which most people are familiar. No blooms now, but there are plenty of tattered and bite-ridden leaves.

The guilty party is the caterpillar of one of our beautiful longwing butterflies, the Gulf Fritillary. I found this striking caterpillar toward the end of his larval stage. He was about 1 ¼ inch long (3.2 cm), and created a chrysalis that is about 1 inch (2.5 cm). You can read more about the Gulf Fritillary here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gulf_Fritillary

Search This Blog

Welcome!

You're visiting the award-winningSketching in Nature, a group blog began in April of 2009; it's grown both in readership and contributors since then, and just gets better all the time.

We've had a recent re-focus, and you'll see LOTS more art and nature notes.

Watch this space...become a follower...bookmark the blog...but don't miss this internationallook at nature through our observant artists' eyes.

Comment, please! We love to know what you enjoy about our blog.

NOTE: Spammers, your comment will be removed and reported to Blogger. Sorry, but this is not the place to make a generic remark and tout your business.

Sketching in Nature on Flickr!

Our sister group is here--click on the image to visit!

About us...

Our correspondents are here by invitation only, from habitats and habits all over the globe. We'd love to have you check in frequently to see what's going on in nature around the world, subscribe to posts, become a follower of the blog--or feel free to join our Flickr group pool by the same name if you enjoy working and learning in nature!

The Flickr Sketching in Nature link is http://www.flickr.com/groups/nature-sketching/ and also on the slide show above--just click and join us! Quite often we find new artists for the blog from that group.